We’re Hiring – Data Scientist Lead

We are looking for a Data Scientist Lead to join our fantastic team in the heart of Brighton.

Who are we?

The Student Room Group (TSR) is the largest, most useful and best-loved online student community there is. Millions of students turn to us first for advice, info and support on work, learning and life’s ups and downs. And that means we’re uniquely privileged to connect educators, employers and consumer brands to switched-on young people actively seeking out answers and meaningful connections.

We are looking for a Data Scientist Lead to build and develop a data science function at The Student Room Group. You will drive significant revenue growth and transform the UK’s best student community into the most powerful recruitment platform for the UK’s higher education system.

What does a data scientist lead at TSR do?

This is an exciting opportunity to create the most impactful new operational team the business has ever seen to drive the core company strategy forward. It’s rare to get the chance to build a new business function from the ground up. You will identify and implement the required technologies, business processes and team as well as recruit that team.

You and your team will draw on your data science skills to work with large and varied data sets, setting a data strategy which finds value in the analysis for our users, and for our commercial clients. You will build automated data pipelines, inform self-learning algorithmic big data models, develop high-value data visualisations and perform rigorous statistical evaluation of the results to produce actionable insights to unlock the value in our data. Working closely with the management team and within one of our three core product teams, this role is responsible for progressing product development decisions to drive new revenues.

Key role responsibilities:

• You should champion the scientific method and strive for excellence in results, balanced with working in an ‘Agile’ way to achieve rapid turnaround.
• Identify and setup suitable professional software to aid the data science function.
• Develop processes and tools to monitor and analyse model performance and data accuracy.
• Develop business processes for utilising the insights developed through data science models to inform strategy and product development.
• Develop custom data models and algorithms to apply to data sets.
• You will help design hypothesis tests, oversee execution, and perform rigorous statistical evaluation of the results to produce actionable insights to complement our commercial offering and help the company maker smarter business decisions.
• Assess the effectiveness and accuracy of new data sources and data gathering techniques.
• Coordinate with different functional teams to implement models and monitor outcomes.
• Manage stakeholders and guide them in unlocking the value in our data and drive business decisions
• Mine and analyse data from company databases to drive optimization and improvement of product development, marketing techniques and business strategies

This job description is not intended to be all-inclusive and will evolve with the ongoing needs of the company.

This opportunity will suit someone who has

• Has the required experience, determination and resilience to develop a new function and have a passion for change and innovation with no concept too big to consider
• Has experience delivering world-class data science outcomes through strong analytical methods, drawing on machine learning and large-scale data mining techniques to discover and identify actionable patterns in data and develop hypotheses and models
• Is adept at using large data sets to find opportunities for product and process optimisation and using models to test the effectiveness of different courses of action
• Has strong experience using a variety of data mining/data analysis methods, using a variety of data tools, building and implementing models, using/creating algorithms and creating/running simulations
• Has a proven ability to drive business results with their data-based insights
• Is experienced in recruiting and building teams and creating data architectures
• Has strong experience using statistical computer languages (R, SAS (or variant), Python, SQL, Java, C/C++ etc.) to manipulate data and draw insights from large data sets
• Strong ability to innovate
• Degree or equivalent in relevant quantitative discipline

Working at The Student Room

We care about employee development, happiness, wellness and work life balance. We offer a welcoming, friendly and supportive working environment, plus we enjoy lots of great benefits including:

A competitive salary

25 days holiday per year, plus bank holidays

Your birthday day off

Opportunities for ongoing learning and development

Flexible working hours and arrangements

Group Life insurance

Generous pension scheme

Private healthcare

Healthcare Cash Plan

Childcare vouchers

Cycle to work Scheme

Pet friendly workplace

Fresh fruit

Friday afternoon drinks

Regular social, team and charity fundraising events

To apply for this position to join the team, please send a cover letter (including your salary expectation) and your current CV to hr@thestudentroom.com.

TSR is dedicated to creating an inclusive working environment that encompasses diversity and equal opportunities. We are committed to supporting a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives and skills.

As part of our recruitment process, The Student Room collects, stores and processes personal data relating to job applicants. Please read our Job Application Privacy Policy to understand how we use and protect the information you provide, both in your application and at other stages of the recruitment process.

Could this be the next step in your career?

Get in touch by sending your current CV and a cover letter to hr@thestudentroom.com. We would love to know more about you, your career aspirations and salary expectation.